Military History Tours          On Tour - Bomber Command (RAAF in the UK) 12 July 2013

This was the day that we headed north towards Bedford where will stay for 3 nights. Our hotel will be the Bedford Swan located on the Swan River. Bedford is on the Oise River west of Cambridge. But first we visited Hendon Museum where there were many aircraft of all periods from when flight commenced up until the present time.

We stayed at the Museum until 1330, having had a bite to eat in the café and started on our trip to Bedford. We had planned to make two detours on the journey. Our first was to find the site, near Hunsdon, where during the War the airfield was the operation base for Australian 464 Sqn. We wanted to locate the site as Bruce MacPherson had a relative who operated from here and crashed near the airport.

After driving along through beautiful thatched villages and hedged lanes we found both the crash site and the hospital that he was treated at. We then continued towards Bedford through the same hedged lanes and thatched villages before we came across this very old country pub begging us to delay our trip and come inside. We did just that and entered a world where others had sat and had a drink from the 15th Century. What a wonderful old pub, called the White Horse. We were greeted by two very friendly coarse haired Jack Russels who immediately took to Alan Berry. Drinks all round before heading off again.

Our second detour was closer to Bedford were we endeavoured to find the location of the hangers that used to house the airships, R101 and R102. After locating the hangers we stopped, as close as we could get to them, and took a few photos. The hangers are huge as the airships were 239 metres long by 43 metres high and needed to be enclosed within the hangers.

Since last year, much has been done to refurbish the hangers with one completed and the other on the way. All the end covering has been removed to enable the struts to be refurbished. A most impressive sight indeed.

We then moved on into Bedford to our hotel. Tomorrow we will be visiting the Shuttleworth Collection at the Bedfordshire Show.